A friend just mentioned an insight about Trump support that I really hadn't considered, at least not in the same context that he mentioned it. His input:
I have a depressing theory about why there are still so many Trump supporters. I think that a lot of Americans (mostly in certain areas of the country) have a strong dislike of anyone who comes across as being smarter than them. Hence they continue to support Trump.
That is anti-intellectualism, but it's also not, at least not in the most standard form. As I see it a more conventional take on that would relate to rejecting the science-based opinions of the "liberal elite," combined with other themes, like perspectives on political correctness or gender identity. Rejecting climate change is a more standard related position, embracing "gut instinct" and politically inclined views, and rejecting research or subject authority based opinions. Conspiracy theories about the moon landing or thinking the earth might be flat are just an extension of those themes.
Anti-intellectualism, or something else?
As I see it this is more about people who see themselves as of somewhat average intelligence banding together tied to cultural commonality, just not on an explicitly understood level. To them maybe Trump is regarded as intelligent, and maybe he's not, but it doesn't matter, he's still "one of them." And that he is; that stream-of-consciousness, uninformed, gut-instinct perspective he always puts out is the opposite of a considered, research and authority informed view. He's informal, and conversational.
Put another more extreme way these people are embracing being stupid and uninformed. I don't think it's that, though; I think it's rejecting what they see as forms of intelligence or worldview context that's just not similar to theirs, falling into the category of "other." Someone using clearly correct English alone might identify that context, at least related to using a more formal version of it, or one that just lacks the errors they tend to include. Saying "ain't" could be seen as a positive thing, a sign of group inclusion, or swearing.
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re-writing history, taking credit for the normal business cycle |
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this is a problem neither side wants to talk about (source) |
Culture divide and culture war
I'll get back to a post from a couple of years ago that adds background to all this, but first lets consider an image that summarizes some of it, from my nephew's Facebook post:
What is troubling about this, beyond my own dislike of Trump, and cartoonish depictions of American nationalism? The "pussy" part is a use of speech not everyone could relate to. Picturing Trump as some sort of 70s action hero can seem jarring.
I'm reminded of telling an employer for a part-time job about a figure of speech involving cursing. I was working as a landscaper while doing other work, for a friend, employed at a very nice home. That home was probably valued around $5 million around then, and on towards 10 during the real estate price spike; quite nice. I liked the woman we worked for, an elderly ivy-league graduate, soft-spoken with a good bit of mid-Atlantic accent (like an NPR show host). The saying I discussed related to my friend "treating me like a mushroom, keeping me in the dark, and feeding me a lot of shit." I have no idea why I chose to share that saying with her; messing around, I guess. She had never heard such a thing, and repeated it, but had to stall for a long pause in trying to get the last word out.
It's clear enough where I'm going with this, right? The word "pussy" could divide people. My nephew watches Nascar, works as a forklift driver, owns a lot of guns, and would use that word, in normal conversation. I'm from Western PA; it all adds up. To that one wealthy employer I was "the help," so using coarse speech wasn't necessarily awful, in that context, just a marker for being on that different social level.
She wasn't completely wrong. I'm from a middle-class background, just not really "working class." My parents both have graduate degrees, and I was an industrial engineer even when I did that work (it's a long story), with prior work experience in two professional positions, and I went on to get a grad degree myself. But then I also grew up with hunting (killing wild animals for food), with grandparents working as a mechanic in the oil industry and as a truck driver.
As far as I know my nephew is not "anti-intellectual," but I doubt he has much of an opinion on the connection between climate change and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. He probably thinks that the weather just happens to change from time to time, something Trump has repeated himself, which almost certainly must connect with pulling the US out of the Paris Accord agreement.
My nephew has a rare and serious heart condition, so he's in the highest of risk categories related to corona. But in spite of continuing to work he is opposed to wearing a mask, because he "can't breathe." I suspect he may represent a rare case of really having an atypical problem, relating to that heart condition. A co-worker at my office said that he does as well; he's in his 70s, and was a heavy cigarette smoker for many decades, and both his heart and lungs probably don't function normally. If either of them get the corona virus that's probably that.
Blaming Trump supporters for believing the lies
For more framing that Facebook post I had mentioned accusing Trump supporters of something along the lines of anti-intellectualism helps go further:
An anguished question from a Trump supporter: "Why do liberals think Trump supporters are stupid?"
The serious answer: Here’s what we really think about Trump supporters - the rich, the poor, the malignant and the innocently well-meaning, the ones who think and the ones who don't...
That when you saw a man who had owned a fraudulent University, intent on scamming poor people, you thought "Fine."
That when you saw a man who had made it his business practice to stiff his creditors, you said, "Okay."
That when you heard him proudly brag about his own history of sexual abuse, you said, "No problem."
That when he made up stories about seeing muslim-Americans in the thousands cheering the destruction of the World Trade Center, you said, "Not an issue."
That when you saw him brag that he could shoot a man on Fifth Avenue and you wouldn't care, you chirped, "He sure knows me."
It goes on from there, for many more lines; familiar stuff. It leads to this conclusion:
What you don't get, Trump supporters in 2018, is that succumbing to frustration and thinking of you as stupid may be wrong and unhelpful, but it's also...hear me...charitable.
Because if you're NOT stupid, we must turn to other explanations, and most of them are *less* flattering.
Clear enough; the other conclusion would be that Trump supporters are also racist, that they lack empathy, and that they're ok with supporting evil. But is this true of my nephew? The first two, sure. That third point gets a little more complicated.
I think the key to all this is group inclusion, not buying into any particular ideas. It's irrelevant to supporters that Trump has done unethical things, and continues to, because they are more concerned with other factors, and parts of that dark past may make him feel like "one of them" all the more. About the immigrants being put in cages, maybe many think that is unfortunate, or that's just how things happen to go, which is less relevant for those people being an "other." I think that ties it all together, in a way my friend's insight really helps inform. It's not a conscious factor, but they are rejecting anything related to the opinions of people they are noticing are more intelligent than them.
My grandfather, who was a truck driver, would tell a lot of stories, all with the moral that the common worker and common sense are of greater value than "book learning." In those stories he was the hero, for solving a problem that his more educated manager just couldn't understand, for not having the same practical experience. All that works better for resolving how to deliver some boxes by truck than it does sorting out how to deal with an issue like a pandemic, climate change, or economic problems.
I'm part of an "other" too, for being intelligent, for not using incorrect grammar, for relating to people with different perspectives, for marrying a foreigner (especially for that), and for having more than one college degree. Obama was seen as an outsider for being black, and probably also for doing that odd formal "Presidential" speech inflection, which I think is related to the mid-Atlantic accent my wealthy former employer used. A Wikipedia entry on that speech pattern would fill in the background, or any related article, but really just listening to any given minute of NPR would work just as well, in between the classical music songs.
It's baffling to many people why Trump's public speech isn't outrageous to almost anyone, but I think this is it: if he was making perfect sense, using clear and well-formed reasoning, structuring what he says as supported arguments, he wouldn't be "one of them" to his supporters.
From his last speech, a transcript from just hours ago:
But in three years, and what we’ve done in just this short period of time, there’s been no administration that’s accomplished what we’ve accomplished, and that’s despite pandemics and despite all of the opposition and all of the witch hunts, the phony witch hunts. No administration has done what we’ve done. We’ve secured our borders, brought back our manufacturing jobs, rebuilt our military, wiped out the ISIS caliphate 100%, killed our terrorist enemies, achieved American energy independence, and guess what? We’re just getting started. That’s just a small part of it. That’s a small part of it.
But he didn't do much of that--which is not the point. Beyond the speech pattern, which is a little meandering, members of his administration have been convicted of felonies, with Bannon right at the start of going through that process. This administration has done nothing to resolve the pandemic, if anything making it worse through denial, with almost all the rest about ISIS and Bin Laden occurring under Obama.
I think the US really has stepped up oil production; there's probably something to that part. That increase also paired with actively stifling renewable energy development, the one potential growth area that should emerge from the ongoing climate change crisis.
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this is probably more representative of his normal speech, just rambling |
The ideas aren't the thing anyway, it's the tone, the way he sets up an us and them type of bond with his supporters. The prior statement does more with that:
And I watched President Obama last night, and I watched him talking about everything, and I had to put it out. I said, yeah, but he spied on our campaign, and he got caught. That’s about as bad a thing as you can imagine. If that happened to another campaign on the other side, they would have had 25 people in jail for many years already. Many, many years. It’s a disgrace.
Leaving aside most of the content specifics, this invokes the divide of the "left" as highly corrupt with him as a victim.
Trump is referring to a right-wing media misinterpretation of a legally processed review of server activity in relation to foreign election tampering ties to Russia, conducted through a search warrant. Trump's campaign really did collude with Russia to have Democratic party emails released through Wikileaks, obtained through hacking, which is relatively the opposite of what he's claiming here. If the Senate hadn't blocked reviewing impeachment processing the details of that collusion probably would've been an outcome finding. But again, it's not about the ideas, it's the context, the us and them division. It only makes sense if you buy in first.
All of this is just a long form of his supporters seeing him as one of their own, right? There are different moving parts to that, and I think my friend is onto something for guessing that Trump not seeming intelligent may play a role in that connection and attraction. It's not really that he's like them in general, or one of them culturally, or in terms of social class, but compared to a broad range of "intellectual types" and perspectives he is with them.
It's a problem on the left and right
I think it's important to fully consider to what extent these types of patterns also play out on "the left," or in Libertarian circles, or across all sorts of paradigms, not only related to politics. People seem to start with the conclusions that they want to arrive at, and adjust the "facts" or evidence to support that. In the case of this political theme it really doesn't help having conservative and liberal media sources to choose from, with relatively few in the middle.
CNN, The Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, and New York Post are all fairly close to the center there, and those are clear-cut sources of liberal and conservative news, nowhere near neutral.
To be clear I think the Democrats and Biden represent less severe problems with our political system, but problems nonetheless, for only truly supporting the interests of a small group of wealthy supporters.
Trump is definitely making a huge mess of the country, risking the end of the US as a world leader and economic power, so ending that is a valid main priority. All the same, the stories that aren't being told by both media sources is another big problem (eg. national debt being seen as a non-issue, the income divide, or climate change a concern, requiring lip service for "the left" but not substantial resolution efforts).
To be clearer, I think the problem extends to liberals too, that of seeing the reality that they want to see, feeling like part of a group related to perspective, and being ok with that. Given where things stand "their side" is more justified in seeing current real problems for what they are, but the country really needs to get on with addressing other next levels of problems. "Fixing" the economic impact of the pandemic by way of adding a few trillion dollars of government debt would create a second problem that is just as significant, and that's exactly what both the Democrats and Republicans will eventually do.
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the impending demise of the US (source) |
America really needs to start doing a lot better. Of course that won't be possible under Trump, so the only two choices are certain disaster for the US or potentially negative outcomes.
The culture war and personal identity
This sort of thing shown in the photo, camouflage formal wear, really does identify people as being part of a social group. And that can divide people, but it really shouldn't, at least not in the form everyone in the US currently experiences. No one should look at this kind of photo and feel hatred, but I get it that people on both sides have already been pushed a bit far.
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the other extreme; taking tea culture and naturally dyed flowing robes a bit far (source) |
Americans need to find the space to disagree about lots of opinions, preferences, worldview / perspective, priorities, and personal taste and style without setting up a divide like the one we are experiencing in the current culture war. That subject needs no further explanation, since everyone in the US is living it, but this reference could help, or I thought this mixed martial arts commentator summary framed it really well, tied to the issue of closing public events related to pandemic risk.
I think some of the finger-pointing on both sides misses underlying important points, and in some cases real issues emerge as badly framed by one or both sides, by liberal or conservative opinions. Trump supporters rejecting the use of masks to protect against the corona virus is probably as clearly one-sided as these sorts of issues ever get, but it's usually not like that. Americans also need to be careful to not toss out reason in support of their side, and to realize when preference biases go a bit far, and cause problems.
The way forward
To start, Trump needs to be voted out of office, before he completely destroys the country.
I'm not calling for an end to the culture war, since that isn't practical, but it seems critical that Americans need to learn to live with their differences. Aggravating and supporting these differences has been useful to some few special interests to shift overall focus, and blindness to that manipulation needs to change.
A more peaceful coexistence is what the country is about, that whole melting pot theme. In that analogy everyone might get reduced down to an ingredient in one integrated "stew," and even a limited degree of coexistence is proving problematic, but at a minimum we have to do better. It's probably an ideal time to consider what both parties are saying related to these themes in the upcoming election, to view the perspectives put forth related to this divide and context.
Moving forward issues like the wealth divide, national debt, degrading infrastructure, media bias distorting information flow, inefficient health care system, and unrealistic expense towards military spending need to be addressed. I'm not as convinced that resolving personal college debt should be high on the government's agenda. Obviously there are race related issues and problems with law enforcement to sort out, but that has to be dealt with locally. the US Federal government can't resolve racism, or tolerance for mistreatment of suspects within police forces. Problems with the justice system are even thornier.
Intelligent, reasoned responses to all these problems are going to be required, and that degree of analysis shouldn't be seen as belonging to one cultural side or the other. That won't be as easy to untangle from the rest as it might seem. Upper class, wealthy business leaders and academics could end up favoring a limited range of interests, especially their own. This combined set of issues will never be resolved until it is understood, but at this point it's more about finger-pointing towards real and perceived gaps on the "other side."
It may seem like I've been guilty of this in this post, for blaming Trump for ineffective pandemic response and all the rest, like ballooning national debt through a tax cut for the wealthy. I really think that he is doing an objectively bad job, making decisions based on his own best interest, not that of the country. I don't think Obama did as much as he could have to promote real change, which is another part of what set up conditions for all this to happen, along with media dividing into two camps.
There are no answers here, just a statement of the problems and underlying context, as I see it.
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